In the years before the First World War the Church of England maintained a mission of help to the Assyrian Church of the East (popularly known as the Nestorian Church) in its homeland, a corner of eastern Turkey and northwestern Persia. Its ideal was to restore this body to its ancient vitality and its place as an independent branch of the true church. The Mission faced many problems. At home there was the difficulty of justifying support of a "heretical" church. In the field, the confidence of the Assyrians proved difficult to gain, especially in competition with other missions: French...

--It has been the fate of many books on John to be left unfinished, for its interpretation naturally forms the crowning of a lifetime. I have myself been intending to write a book on the Fourth Gospel since the 'fifties, before I broke off (reluctantly) to be Bishop of Woolwich, though I am grateful now that I did not produce it prematurely at that time. It means however that I shall be compelled to refer to and often recapitulate material directly or indirectly related to the Johannine literature, which I have written over the years (some of it indeed while I was bishop). --Many scholars in...